Love draws couple to restore OTR's Crown Building

Jul. 26, 2013

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Kim Starbuck on the ground floor of the old Crown Building that she and husband, Kevin Pape, own near Findlay Market. / The Enquirer/Leigh Taylor

KNOW SOMEONE?

This story is part of The Enquirer’s series about people who are working to make this a better place for all of us. They work in the arts, community service, their own businesses. They all believe you can create something exciting and fresh in Cincinnati. Know somebody creating things? Email John Faherty at jfaherty@enquirer.com.

Tour the building

To see what the building looks like now and to hear Kim Starbuck explain the process, go to cincinnati.com/inspired. To learn more about this building and its history, go to www.crownotr.com. You’ll see before and after photos and historical archives.

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Beware the power of the affogato. It is two scoops of gelato drowned – that’s “affogato” in Italian – in espresso, and it should make anybody a little bit wary.

Kim Starbuck and Kevin Pape used to sit at the red tables on the western end of Findlay Market outside of Dojo Gelato, eat their affogatos, and talk.

Already married for 23 years, their children already grown, sometimes they would dream about the ways they might be able to make a difference in the city where they grew up and in the neighborhood they had come to love.

One day, back in 2010, enjoying their gelato and espresso, everything came into focus.

For years Starbuck and Pape, both 58, had kind of liked the old brick building sitting across the street from Findlay Market. It had occupied the corner of Elm and Elder streets since 1885.

During its 125-plus years, the Crown Building has been many things – convenience store, furniture store, boxing club, liquor store, chicken shack – but it didn’t look like it had ever been loved.

Because they had an eye for buildings, Starbuck and Pape could look past the periodically boarded windows and garish lights. They could see through the thick layers of gray paint to the fine details. On this day they saw a new future for an old building. They appreciated its past, too.

“A building like this is a touchstone of who we are and where we came from,” Pape said. “It’s not just the architecture. It is the lives that were committed to these buildings. The owners, the builders, the people who lived and worked there.”

Starbuck and Pape decided the Crown Building – named from the Crown Furniture retail store that long occupied the first floor – was where they would make their difference.

They would buy the building and fix it up. But their goal was bigger than the building. The hope was to help a neighborhood.

The area around Findlay Market is different from the renovated part of Over-the-Rhine. People come day and night to spend their money in OTR. They shop, stay for dinner and drinks, and sometimes buy or lease an apartment.

Around Findlay Market, visitors come on weekend mornings. They come and they shop, then they get in their cars and go home.

Starbuck and Pape, perhaps loopy on affogato, decided the Crown Building would be where change started.

“This is a chance to grow the viability of the market past daytime shopping,” Starbuck said. “Not only is it a great building, but it’s strategically important, too.”

The building is four stories high with a big parking lot right behind it. Starbuck and Pape saw a restaurant on the 5,000-square-foot first floor, business offices on the 2nd floor and apartments on the 3rd and 4th levels. The streetcar is going to stop right outside.

It all seemed perfect, but the building was, alas, not for sale. Starbuck and Pape were not going to be deterred. They found the owner, made an offer and in April 2011, they bought it for $100,000. Then the work – and spending – really began.

But they were ready for it. Pape is the president and co-founder of Gray & Pape, a cultural resources management and historic preservation consulting firm. Starbuck is a documentary photographer, specializing in historic architecture. So they both know their way around old brick and mortar.

Pape is fluent in historic preservation and Starbuck is inclined toward the passion necessary for a project like this. She became the project manager, spending five, six, sometimes seven days a week walking the hallways.

The building, as they guessed, was lovely but old. It had roof problems and gutter problems and some odd changes made through the decades. Starbuck and Pape started with subtraction, stripping away everything that did not feel original or important or beautiful. The more workers stripped away, the more Starbuck fell in love.

And now, it is really almost done. After two years of challenges and headaches and revisions and refinishing, the building is emerging. “This building always had beauty, real beauty. We’re just helping people find it,” Starbuck said.

She points with visible excitement to windows, the details of a staircase, the way the light reflects off the floor. The spaces are quirky and filled with light. The living units feel historic but relevant.

Boxes of appliances are now in the kitchens and workers are buzzing on every floor. Parts of the building have been leased already and there are regular showings and meetings with restaurateurs interested in the first floor.

Already Starbuck is seeing a future when she and Pape actually sell their home in Pleasant Ridge and call this place home. For a time he will (pretend to) resist, but they both know he will eventually give in.

But that is years away. On this day, they are asked if a job like this is a labor of love or a chance to make a smart investment. Starbuck and Pape give different answers at the same time, a reminder of the fact that they are a married couple.

Pape: “What’s the difference?”

Starbuck: “Love.”

Pape: “But we would not do this if it did not make financial sense.”

Starbuck, shaking her head and smiling: “This is definitely love.” ⬛

I will write about absolutely anything ... so long as it is interesting. Reach me at jfaherty@enquirer.com.